The Question and Answer Board

[IH Admin]

IMPORTANT POLICY CHANGE - Please Read

Over the years there have been images posted in board posts and iBoxes that depicted scantily clad or otherwise racy images. Years ago we banned them from signatures and stock boards so that those who didn't wish to view them wouldn't see them. Images depicting minors (or what appear to be under-aged persons) that are exploitive, suggestive or abusive (at iHub’s discretion), as well as semi-nude and nude images have been and will remain banned.

Search engines and advertising networks (e. g., Google) have become more sophisticated and aggressive in recent years, categorizing both recent and ancient iHub content as "adult" in nature. This includes content found throughout the site, from posts, to iBoxes to profiles to signatures. These networks penalize sites that have content that they claim does not meet their advertising standards, even though the same or similar content - and far worse - can be found on their own properties. It’s good to be the king.

It’s also confounding that content that was posted years ago is only now considered to be unacceptable; content that they often cannot or will not specifically identify but which we are required to eliminate in order to meet a nebulous standard. There are dozens of boards here that appear to fall into the "adult content" category and our most obvious option is to simply take all of those boards down.

However, it has always been a goal at iHub to preserve history as much as possible. We don't delete posts en masse or wipe out large numbers of posts to remove an account. We don’t allow users to self-remove posts in order to re-write or censor history. We would like to maintain that goal while at the same time appeasing our internet partners’ wishes.

Toward that end, we are giving moderators of general topic boards with “racy” imagery 48 hours to remove all offending images in their iBox, and to remove posts containing such content that were made in the last 48 hours. If moderators choose not to clean up their boards, then they can expect that it will be taken down which means the entire board and history of posts will be removed from public view forever.

We are also asking that if anyone is perusing old messages and comes across these kinds of posts, please report it via the Report TOS Violation link at the bottom of the post. That way we can hopefully remove some content that has the potential to be flagged as inappropriate.

Going forward, there will be a zero tolerance for this kind of image (photo or drawing) content on any board here. (There’s no shortage of image repositories on the Internet.) Users, please don't post them or you'll likely find yourself suspended. Moderators, please make sure that such content is immediately removed from your board and alert Admins to the offender.

We understand no one likes change and there's going to be griping about this one as well. However, this policy change is not up for debate. Further clarification may be provided as we are able to, but that’s a moving target for us as well. We have to set a baseline, so we will start with the following, though it is not and should not be considered to be an exhaustive list:

• No partial (or full) nudity.
  
• No see-through garments.
  
• No depictions of any kind of minors or persons appearing to be minors that are exploitive, suggestive or abusive.

The United States Supreme Court was once faced with a similar conundrum when trying to describe a threshold test for obscenity. As Justice Stewart wrote (emphasis added):

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

We will take a similar approach:

If it looks sketchy, it doesn’t belong on a site that pertains to stocks.